Coping With Jealousy in Your Relationship

Jealousy is a natural part of life for just about everyone, but it quickly goes from normal to problematic when it consumes your relationship. It’s impossible for two people to have a trusting, caring relationship when it’s built on an unstable foundation of jealousy.

While jealousy is a serious issue, it’s not impossible to overcome. Here are some strategies you can employ to cope with jealousy in any relationship:

Acknowledge Jealous Feelings

You know the feeling — you see your partner laughing or joking with someone who isn’t you. No matter who it is or how benign the interaction really is, you feel that familiar pang of jealousy setting in.

The worst thing you can do in moments like this is push those feeling aside. Doing this will only amplify the feeling and make it even stronger.

Instead, take a step back and acknowledge that you are having a moment of jealousy and determine if there’s anything you can do to move past it. The answer will not always be yes, but gaining control of your feelings will prevent them from spiraling into something bigger and more dangerous.

If you see jealousy in your partner, try to help them recognize it as early possible so the situation does not escalate into a bigger fight.

Get To the Heart of the Issue

Once you begin to acknowledge when jealousy occurs, you can start to determine patterns about what might trigger those feelings. Those patterns may likely lead to some underlying assumptions or issues that are causing you to be jealous.

Don’t be afraid to have an honest conversation about what you uncover. Often, jealousy is rooted in a misconception of one partner’s actions by the other — so something that seems completely innocuous to one person is causing exactly the opposite reaction in the other.

You’re never going to know about these difference unless you talk about them. The conversations will be difficult at first but will pay off in the long run as the jealous feelings begin to recede!